


Crashlander

by Lost_Light



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Clovis Bray Exoscience Corporation, Exclusion Zone, Game: Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals, Mars, The Buried City
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_Light/pseuds/Lost_Light
Summary: The crew of the Outbound Ambition, fleeing Earth, crash on Mars. Between an unnatural dust storm and the remnant of the Cabal loyalist occupation can they find a way off the red planet?
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Outbound Ambition falls from the sky.

TYPE: OUTBOUND AMBITION FLIGHT LOG [CONTINGENCY RECORD]

PARTIES: Two (2), One, Type: Human, Captain: Outbound Ambition (DOTR-616) designate: SRUTHI PASHA (p), Two, Type: AI Construct, designate: BLACKBOX (bb)

Associations: Mars; Exclusion Zone; Cabal; Unknown Interference Type Rho

//AUDIO CONTINGENCY ARCHIVED//

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS…/

p:01 G shear increasing try the [inaudible] get the nose up.

p:02 Blown out the ions, switching to atmospherics.

p:03 [inaudible] garbage, come on, come on.

bb:01 Be advised, atmospheric interface not at recommended angle.

p:04 Shut up shut up shut up [inaudible] what was [inaudible]

bb:02 Be advised, critical damage to primary fuel line.

p:05 [inaudible]

bb:03 Be advised, angle of descent not recommended.

bb:04 Be advised, angle of descent not recommended.

p:06 [inaudible]

bb:05 Impact event imminent.

/RECORD ENDS//


	2. Crashlander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Survivors of the Outbound Ambition find themselves trapped in a ruined city as they try to ride out an unnatural storm.

ADDAX LUMEN COMMERCIAL, MERIDIAN BAY, MARS

4 DAYS SINCE CRASH

//Type: Human, Flight Control Officer: Outbound Ambition, Designate: HYAT GHENT

//ACCOUNT FOLLOWS.../

Dust had piled up against the windows choking the rusty Martian light. The storm had lasted for two days, maybe three. Hyat’s watch had broken in the impact. They checked it anyway, then the trusty Crypt Dweller rifle; sight cover, magazine, bipod. Made sure when they needed it, it would work.

Thirty six of two hundred and twenty. Tired and hungry and full of sorrow held at bay only by the urgent business of hiding. In groups they huddled as Sib worked on Blackbox, the remnant of the Ambition’s simple AI, holding hope of working as a beacon. Hyat watched her dirty hands working across the boards with a scavenged wire of Spinmetal, heavy lidded eyes focused on anything but where they were. It was good that she was keeping busy.

Out in the storm the Cabal were moving. Dust Giants had mostly been wiped out by The Red Legion, those that had survived were on the move somewhere. Maybe driven by the storm? Hyat wrapped themselves in their poncho and double checked the rifle again. They didn’t want to squander what little luck they had left.

They’d used it all before the crash. They were supposed to be on the flight deck. Fingers tried to rub away the afterimage of blackened bulkheads, teeth dug deep into their lip until they could taste copper.

They’d only been asleep a moment when they jolted awake at the sound of their name, hissed urgently from the north side of the building. One of the passengers, she didn’t know his name, was waving to her in the dark. Hyat crept over to him, the night beyond the window choked with light diffused by the rusty Martian dust.

There was a distant thump. He turned back to the window just in time to see it explode inward.

The wind roared in with the dust and took most of the worst of the screaming. Hyat knew he was dead before she reached him. The Dweller came up, Hyat’s shoulder into the stock, barking shots in the direction they thought the fire had come from.

“Hyat!” Came a voice over the storm. “Hyat!?”

“Go!” Hyat spat out with the dust between their teeth.

They fired wildly, stumbling backwards over uneven rubble. Sib was at the door when the rifle clicked empty, waving them in. beyond was a corridor piled with red dust, scuffled lines leading them down, deeper into the half buried building. Sib held their arm, guiding them as they tried to pick dust from their eyes. When they managed it they saw she was still carrying Blackbox’s heavy case.

“Leave it Sib, it’ll only slow you down.” They spluttered.

“It’s fine.” She said sternly. “Come on.”

It had been an old Addax facility, they did something with mass drivers and heavy industry before the collapse. They didn’t know much more than that. Text in three languages declared the loading dock before they arrived. Sib took a headcount while Hyat wheezed out the rest of the grit and fumbled to slot a fresh magazine.

“Down four.” Sib said quietly, kneeling by them.

Outside the movement of the wind against the frame of the building was joined by a low rumble and then a whining. Hyat rose to meet the noise. They knew the noise. Drop ships. In the gloom of the loading dock, amongst palettes picked clean thirty-two people shivered and whimpered and Hyat gritted their teeth.

“We’re making a run for it.” They said.

It was an instruction, not a request. They saw the moment of doubt cross Sib’s face, but she knew better than to disagree. They needed a united front and, Hyat suspected, Sib didn’t have much more of a plan than hiding and hoping.

They could hear the Cabal breaking into the main annex as they slipped out of an accessway into the darkness of the Martian night. Faces wrapped against the storm, a line of optical cable ripped from a junction box tied around each of them, through belt loops and pack harnesses to keep them together. Sib anchored the line, Hyat and the rifle headed it.

The wind tore through them, the line sagging was they fought their way out into the darkness as if against a tide that threatened to sweep them away. The storm drowned out everything until nothing behind Hyat existed save the weight of the line. They would push forward then halt as it fell taught, trying to decipher the jumble of tugs and pulls about their waist. Do they wait for everyone to catch up? Are they in danger? Are those at the back already dead?

Exhausted they stumbled into an alleyway that shielded them from the worst of the wind, gun raised to the corners and the windows, looking for something and hoping desperately not to see the glint of a barrel. Back down the line they counted until they spotted Sib on the end still cradling Blackbox. For a moment she looked relieved until she saw Hyat’s rifle swinging up.

The alleyway thundered with the sound of the shot, the sound crashing over itself until the echo was the only thing that existed, followed by the sharp yelp and hiss of decompression. Sib turned to see the Cabal behind her slump and fall backwards uits compatriot surging forwards. 

Hayt tried to control the bucking rifle, squeezing the trigger. They didn’t see their second shot, the third striking the next Cabal’s broad shield. It ignored the line of travellers and surged straight toward them. Hyat tried to run and got as far as the end of the line, the cable snapping tight.

The cabal surging toward them filled the whole world, like a tidal wave of iron. Futile reflex made them bring up the rifle as if to parry the impact, their face tightening into a grimace as they readied for the impact.

Bang.


	3. Lightmonger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xyxn, an Infiltrator Psion of the Cabal Legions tracks the survivors of the Outward Ambition through The Buried City.

ADDAX LUMEN COMMERCIAL, MERIDIAN BAY, MARS

5 DAYS SINCE CRASH

//Type: Cabal Psion, Cabal Remnant, Designate: XYXN, THE DEAD VOICE

//ACCOUNT FOLLOWS.../

The Y-goblet overflowed this day with dust, always dust. This was an omen, or a portent, or a promise. Xyxn had not the mind for the ritual of old, they felt a trespasser in the old ways, as young born and bound to the Legions they inherited only such scraps as they were permitted. They knew the form to worship the ancestors, but not the intent. They could never betray their ancestors with words they had not been taught.

This was the wise thing to do. Xyxn knew.

They turned from such things and subsumed their mind in the task they had been given. For five days they had hunted. They felt the wind and on it the resonance of their prey. They had been here, recently. Dust whirled from the newcomer that scattered the Dust Giants before it. It blew through Human buildings that huddled futilely against the inevitable. It was a dead place save the pale white bones of the old building, red with fresh blood that shivered as their mind pressed against it.

Here had been humans. They felt their presence. They felt of fear and doubt and confusion. Xyxn hated the sensation but it was strong and clear, easy to track. Snarls of dust swept around them as they followed it. Across the broad expanse of cracked, aging concrete, to where one building leaned drunkenly against the next for support. Fear here, clearer in the mind. The other emotions were Cabal, anger, surprise and then panic.

Xyxn followed the path backward. Here laid a Cabal, body piling up with dust, slug rifle still in her hand. Her suit was depressurised, helmet smashed open. Death lay on the ground all around her. They followed it to its source. The air was thick with nothingness and Light, Xyxn recognised it immediately. From the sparkling of the dust, the fractal memory of a moment in the air like something seen and then forgotten in a dream.

“Lightmonger.”

The Humans had been led through the warrens, where a district of glass had been shattered. One of the great towers had fallen against another and caused it to list, the Martian dust climbing it as if a tide trying to drag it down. It was nothing more than a silhouette against the wind and dust of the storm. Xyxn sheltered there for a while and ate a little, reserving salt for the Y-Goblet as they had been taught to do. May it please the ancestors to keep them safe through the storm.

They tarried for a while and listened to the wailing of the wind through the ruins of Humanity‘s dominion over the red world. Their reign was short and their reach shorter, yet beneath their god machine they broke legions like waves on a rock.

Yet what had it gotten them?

They were moving faster than the humans, the walked a ragged line their footsteps swallowed by shifting sands, yet the presence of their passing was clean in Xyxn’s mind. They were making their way toward Tarsus Junction, to be expected if they were right about this particular Lightmonger. There was where the storm picked up and lightning flashed through the gloom. Xyxn clung to themselves as they walked grateful for their mask.

At the fading of the light they finally caught up with their prey. Humans, perhaps thirty, swaddled in blankets and rags and whatever else they could salvage, Xyxn suspected. They were mundane, not with their inspection save the figure at the head of the line. A flayer would have been able to pick out their every detail, one day ancestors willing Xyxn would too, but they could tell enough. He reeked of the Light and gun oil and death. When he walked he rattled with bones of metal, and coin, but not for spending.

Xyxn knew this one well. The Legion wouldn’t want to come this close to the source of the storm but Valus Comorh would for the secrets the Lightmonger held. Xyxn slipped back down the dune and started into a low run toward the Cabal lines.


End file.
